From the Desk of the Executive Director

THE GOOD NEWS AND THE BAD NEWS

We’ve heard the phrase elections have consequences continuously, and for those of us in the public education space, Betsy DeVos’ impending departure allows us all a moment to exhale. There have been few people who have done more to damage students, educators and the sacred institution of public education as DeVos. We now have the opportunity to have a Secretary of Education who will put *all* students first. We need an Education Secretary who understands educators are experts on public education, not unaccountable billionaires looking to profit off our kids. Unfortunately, I’m not as excited about our prospects at the state level. We started this year working to build on the major collective victories that we had in 2019: from defeating a major attack on the Teacher Retirement System, to extending higher education opportunities to more students through a state level DREAM Act and defeating more voucher efforts. These successes were due to our work to successfully build a coalition of pro public education lawmakers from both sides of the aisle. AEA members got to work organizing around public education champions who were running in competitive primary elections, winning 3 of 5 of these elections. We successfully advocated for the Educational Adequacy Committee to recommend significantly more investment in public education in Arkansas including a proposal to set aside millions more for school districts to increase teacher pay. If lawmakers approve these recommended funding levels, it will be the single largest increase in state investment in public education in Arkansas in 14 years. We worked with a coalition of partners and successfully defeated Ballot Issue 3 in the November election, which would have gutted our ability to have direct access for citizens to place things like a minimum wage increase on the ballot. In addition, the members who serve on the ACCPE recommended 12 candidates in the General Election. We were able to deliver wins in 7 of these races, but the elections that we were not able to win in both the primary and in the general election have significant implications for the upcoming legislative session. As I mentioned earlier, we have been able to successfully defeat the biggest attacks on public education, ATRS and our students because of our elections, communications and policy advocacy and by building a bipartisan coalition of legislators. The legislative races we were not able to win took key pro public education lawmakers from the house and senate education committees as well as the joint retirement committees. I want to be clear: the narrow path we have been able to build in the past 5 years has now become extremely narrow. The good news is we have built very strong coalition partnerships with other pro public education organizations including the administrators and school board associations. I strongly encourage you to build strong, close, and to the extent possible, positive relationships with your school district leaders. Strengthening this pro public education coalition may be our only path to help defeat what we anticipate to be a major attack on public education and potentially on AEA in the 2021 session which begins in January. We must renew our calls on state officials to protect the health and safety of our students, and school employees. However, we must do this in coalition with other pro public education organizations in our state. Please join with your fellow AEA members, your school boards, your superintendents and everyone within the public education community to join forces as we combat this deadly virus plaguing our state and the anticipated attacks on public education that will come in 2021 legislative session.

Tracey-Ann Nelson AEA Executive Director